Modern financial management applications provide automated features for tracking purchases. For example, given information about a user's past purchases, a typical financial management application can automatically generate simple information, such as a summary of purchases by the user, or complex information, such as categorizations of purchases or a projections of future expenses.
Unfortunately, users still manually perform many operations. For example, users often shop for inventory items and other goods by visiting online web stores. After making a purchase, user typically receives a receipt containing data relating to purchased items via email or a dedicated web page. The user must then manually enter this data into their financial management application by: (1) creating a purchase order for the purchased items; (2) adding information for new vendors (i.e., web stores) whose data does not exist within the financial management application; (3) adding information for new items whose data does not exist within the financial management application; (4) creating a bill, entering the items purchased into the bill, and saving the bill. Entering this data is a time-consuming and error-prone process.